Despite international alarm over the potential for carnage in a city crammed with more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people, the Israel prime minister said ‘we’re going to do it’.
The threat of an Israeli incursion into Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah persisted on Sunday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising “safe passage” to civilians displaced there.
In an interview airing on Sunday, Netanyahu reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation to the city.
Despite international alarm over the potential for carnage in a city crammed with more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people, Netanyahu : “We’re going to do it”.
He conceded he agrees “with the Americans” that the operation will need to first plan for the impact on civilians.
“We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave,” he said, according to published extracts of the interview.
But it is unclear where such a large number of people, who are pressed up against the border with Egypt and sheltering in makeshift tents, can go.
Israel’s Netanyahu orders military plan to evacuate Rafah and defeat Hamas
When asked, Netanyahu would only say they are “working out a detailed plan”.
As Israeli forces have extended steadily southwards, Rafah has become the last major Gaza city that troops have yet to enter, even as it is bombarded by air strikes almost daily.
“They said Rafah is safe, but it is not. All places are being targeted,” Palestinian Mohammed Saydam said after an Israeli strike destroyed a police vehicle in Rafah on Saturday.
“The people in Gaza cannot disappear into thin air,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on social media platform X, adding that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “humanitarian catastrophe in the making”.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry warned on Saturday of “very serious repercussions of storming and targeting” Rafah and called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting, while UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said he is “deeply concerned” about the prospective offensive.
